My Creative Process

Halloween Treat Bag Toppers Tutorial

I love making these little treat bag toppers. They are great for all sorts of occasions. I've used them for thank you gifts, Christmas neighbor gifts, various holiday treats, and teacher gifts. You can put anything you can imagine in the bags themselves from homemade cookies or popcorn to candy. I used a clear bag for these toppers. However, you can easily find bags with fun designs of them. If buy the bags first, you can match your design of the topper to the colors/design of the bag, which is really fun.  

The first time I saw a bag topper was on Shabby Princess. Since that time, I have designed many of my own. Here is how I do it.

I use Adobe Photoshop 7.0 to do these. The process is similar in any version of Photoshop or Elements. If you don't have Photoshop I have a freebie download here for a Halloween themed bag topper.

Open a New Document that is 5x7". You can find treat bags at the craft store and sometimes the grocery store. The craft store ones are clear (usually) and you can find the printed ones at the grocery store in the holiday aisle. They are generally 5x11" big, which is why a 5x7" topper will fit. I have found smaller bags at the craft store that are 4x9" and you can make 4x6" bag toppers for those, which is cheaper because 4x6 prints are so much less than 5x7. But those only come in clear.

Create a New Guide at 3.5" horizontal. Or at 3" if you are making a 4x6" topper.

 Working on only the bottom half, add a background paper. This will be 3.5 x 5"

Add elements to the background. The black border is from Leora Sanford at Little Dreamer. The BOO! title is from Lettering Delights. The font for the wording is Century Gothic. You will need to know how to work in layers. There are lots of tutorials online about that.

Rotate Canvas 180 degrees. This is because when the topper is folded in half you want both sides to be right side up. Make sense?

Add page elements for other half. You can also add a "to and from" like I did. Or you can leave it blank and hand write it in after it's printed. Again the frame is from Leora Sanford and the Happy Halloween and Pumpkin are from Lettering Delights.

Save.  I like to save one copy in layers so I can go back and edit it, and another as a flattened jpeg.

Print. Fill bags with treats. Fold topper in half. Staple it on each side to secure. Deliver to lucky recipient! I usually print them at Costco on matte photo paper so that fingerprints don't show.

Here are a few different ones I have designed.